Mysore, No sore

On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti...ok, ok, that's just an excuse for going out on a drive, we headed out to Mysore. The reason we gave ourselves was that the last time we had gone down to see the famous Mysore palace, our daughter was only 9 months old. So she has not seen a real life palace. Since we needed only an excuse to go on a long drive on such a fine national holiday, go to Mysore we did.

Not to take anything away from the reason for the holiday. As one of the finest examples of India, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (we call him Mahatma Gandhi here in India) was the inspiration for people like Dr Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela to choose the path of non violence as a form of protest. It is, to a large extent, to Mahatma Gandhi's credit that I am a free Indian with the freedom to write the kind of crap that I do on this blog.

Coming back to the topic, the decision to go to Mysore was an easy one to make. For one, it's just 150km from Bangalore. Secondly, the roads are pretty good to get there. And it would be a nice idea for my daughter to see how the kings of yesteryears lived.

So we left around 8am, wanting to get there without too much sun on our heads. When I started the car (oh, my lovely car), I could see that the car had 3/4th of the tank full. Enough fuel for the trip and more, I thought.

The drive was a breeze. The way the car handles, the ease with which it negotiates traffic, the comfort for the whole family (my daughter was sleeping sprawled on the back seat...and being as tall as she is, she still managed to sleep fairly stretched!). I had to rub my eyes when I saw the dashboard tell me that I was getting 16.7 km/l as my mileage. And all this while clipping on at 120km/hr on cruise control.

Even when I decided to floor it, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the transmission was humming on in the 4th gear way past the 120kmph mark and then still in 5th gear at the 140kmph mark. Only when I backed off the pedal did the 6th gear engage. I could have kept it floored for some more time (mainly to discovery the top speed of the car), but was sure that this was not the road to try these stunts on. What with people (and cattle) crossing the road at random intervals and from all possible places, it was the riskiest thing to do.

And then I discovered something about Indian traffic. No matter how fast you go, you will get slowed down by slower moving traffic and will lose your momentum. Not to mention your fuel. So instead of zipping around, I was driving at a fast, but not too fast, speed and watched as my fuel efficiency rode to newer heights. All this while making good time and enjoying the ride, not to mention the scenary.

And when the trip ended, I still had a lot of fuel left in the car. It was something I had never experienced when I was driving my old car (not to take anything away from it).

All in all, we had a lovely trip. Clicked a few pix (some I will post here tomorrow). A lovely day.

Happy Gandhi Jayanti!